Congo is Africa's most dangerous conflict

By William Pomeroy

After a series of frustrating starts and stops, negotiations to end the year-long civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been teetering on the edge of a cease-fire agreement.

Beginning in August 1998 as a rebellion against the post-Mobutu government of President Laurent Kabila, it has swept from the eastern-most regions of Congo to gain control of over one-third of the vast Central African country.

Resolving the conflict has been made difficult by the fact that neither side has made moves to achieve peace.

The Congos crisis has been complicated by the drawing into the war directly of at least six other African countries whose troops have been engaging on one side or the other in the military struggle.

It has affected the national interests and stability of the whole of central, eastern and southern Africa, and the pressures for a negotiated settlement have come from these countries outside Congo, not from the forces within it.

Rebellion itself was launched by a Congolese Rally for Democracy, which had a former anti-Mobutu politician and intellectual, Wamba dia Wamba, for its president and was a coalition of political groups that had been denied the right to function as political parties by ethnic animosities against Kabila's predominantly Katangese government.

Aiding the rebels, however, were other forces: the neighboring countries of Rwanda and Uganda, both of which had provided the key military backing for Laurent Kabila to overthrow Mobutu in 1997.

The main reason for this was that Mobutu had permitted opposition guerrillas to attack both of those countries from Congo territory (Rwanda by the Hutus who had been driven out after perpetrating the 1994 genocidal slaughter of the ethnic Tutsis, and the so-called "Lord's Resistance" Army that wars against the Museveni regime in Uganda).

However, he antagonized his backers by failing to suppress or halt the same depredations, even forming an alliance with the Hutu Interahamwe army in east Congo.

It had been hoped that the Kabila regime would promote the national democratic development for Congo that Mobutu had ruined, but his government has failed to win either domestic or international respect, and has banned a multiparty system.

Kabila reportedly caused foreign investment to shy away because of demands for tax payment on expected profits in advance.

The fact that the RCD rebellion threatened to overrun Congo faster than the anti-Mobutu movement had done led Kabila to seek outside aid. It was responded to by Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and eventually Chad.

Angola sent troops out of concern that the resurgent Unita rebels in its own country had reported ties with the RCD. Zimbabwe's Mugabe government sent 10,000 troops, which together with the Angolan units, played the chief role in halting the rebel advance in Congo.

As the war has become prolonged, however, Kabila's alllies have had problems in maintaining their support. Faced with a major Unita offensive at home, Angola has been forced to withdraw its best troops for its own defense.

In Zimbabwe, opposition to involvement in the war has mounted as Zimbabwean troops, bearing the brunt of much of the heaviest fighting, have suffered heavy casualties. There has been opposition in Namibia as well.

Disturbed by the spreading impact of the conflict, calls for peace talks have come from non-involved states - Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, and with particular weight, South Africa. After several unsuccessful efforts, serious talks with all parties attending opened in Lusaka, Zambia in the latter part of June.

Complicating these have been divisions within the rebel forces. The RCD is split between factions headed by Wamba dia Wamba, who was removed as president, and by the new president, Emile Ilunga. A split-away faction, calling itself the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, is headed by Jean-Pierre Bemba.

The Lusaka negotiations resulted in a cease-fire agreement signed July 10 by all six African countries that support the two sides. However, so far none of the rebel factions agreed to sign, unwilling to end a war they believe they are winning.

For one thing, rebel forces have driven to within 50 miles of Congo's principal diamond producing center, Mbuyi Muyi, the output of which has been a main means of support for Kabila's war effort.

Its capture by the rebels would transform the situation in Congo. It would probably be inevitable that they would come to terms, however, if their foreign backers, Rwanda and Uganda, do so.

As drafted, the agreement signed is ambitious. It provides for the withdrawal of all foreign troops; recognition of a cease-fire line based on present positions; deployment of a peacekeeping force from non-involved countries; the overseeing of the cease-fire by a joint military council of the six involved states and the two rebel movements (RCD and MLC); establishment of a new national Congo army merging government and rebel forces, and steps toward a new civil order of a multiparty character.

There are immense problems in implementing such an agreement. The composition and size of the peacekeeping force would be unprecedented in Africa; some observers say that up to 300,000 would be needed across the vast forested disputed regions.

The U.N. is to be asked to provide such a force; if not, the Organization of African Unity would be turned to, although the OAU has a poor peacekeeping record. The prospect for dissension in the overseeing military council is great.

Another problem is that establishment of a demarking cease-fire line could well lead to a de facto development of a permanent division of Congo, with rebel forces holding the huge eastern provinces and setting up their own state.

Such a splitting of Congo, largely along ethnic lines, would be viewed with alarm by other African countries, most of which are multiethnic.

That African states, without western intervention, have by themselves, tackled the difficult Congo conflict and worked out a tentative agreement, is impressive. It was referred to at the Lusaka talks as a significant precedent-setting case of Africans solving African problems.